


A Burning Fever In A Parisian Night

by DictionaryWrites



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-07 01:40:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1114003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Combeferre comes to Grantaire's apartment to find him painting. Their exchange is a stumbled one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Burning Fever In A Parisian Night

"Grantaire." Combeferre greeted quietly when the drunkard entered, and the brunet stopped short, staring at him with his chapped lips parted, the scars on his face illuminated and shining in the flicker of the Musain’s candlelight. 

They were alone, for Enjolras and Courfeyrac were held up at the school, and the others never came until later. Grantaire clutched at a green bottle, cradled it in his arms like a babe he would never lay claim to (Combeferre hoped for the revolution but he didn’t carry much faith in it, and he carried no faith at all for their living past it), and Combeferre watched him.

"Are you better?" Combeferre asked of him, and Grantaire gave a rueful little laugh.

"Am I ever, my good man?" 

_(And Grantaire had been breathless, gasping, and he must have been drunk or high with opium for he looked delirious and yet he painted, and when  under the influence Grantaire could never paint with so much fervous and skill as he was at this moment._

_His hands flew across the canvas, not with brushes but with the bare pads of his skilled fingers, and he said between desperate exhales and inhales, “A bloodied fever in the night, a flame, an illumination, conflagration, a fire and an inferno, sweeping through the streets and baring the soul of the city from beneath the brick-” And then, he went silent, ugly brow furrowed as he stared at the canvas before him, and after a lengthy pause had been sad, he said, “A damnation.”)_

”Some nights more than others, it would seem.” Combeferre said quietly, and Grantaire recoiled as if the older man had slapped him across the face, or- no. As if Combeferre had burned him. “Did you finish it?”

"Finish what?" And Grantaire feigned ignorance here as he feigned it with Enjolras, but Combeferre wasn’t carried by the fire Enjolras was, wasn’t blinded by his own light and shine: he saw Grantaire in a way Grantaire did not like to be seen - he saw Grantaire in truth. 

It was funny, Combeferre thought to himself sometimes, that he should look to Enjolras with such worship in his eyes, that he should call him Phoebus Apollo for his light and his life, and still recoil from Enjolras’ want to heal the city (and to heal Grantaire of his ills, impossible though it was), and to flee from honesty.

"The painting. Did you finish it?"

( _And Grantaire had slumped there on his stool, blue, piercing eyes tracing over the canvas as he searched for pieces to add to, to complete, but then he had turned, swivelling his body to face Combeferre._

 _Grantaire was ugly, and yet here he was bewitching - not beautiful, still not beautiful, and yet Combeferre felt to look away from the passion etched across his every feature would be wrong, a crime against humanity, a crime against_   ** _Grantaire_** _ **.** )_

Grantaire became evasive, and he made a face, lip curling, eyes turning to the floor instead of meeting Combeferre’s own gaze. He searched the room, beseeching that God give him an out, but He never did. Grantaire almost laughed: when had He ever?

"Yes." Grantaire said, and the affirmation came gruffly, hoarse and low. 

"A commission?" Combeferre asked quietly, and his tone held a deliberation that Grantaire was suspicious of. Was Combeferre mocking him now, joining what too many others did in the scheme of Grantaire’s life? Was he laughing ( _ma vie est une blague_ ) at Grantaire?

"No." Grantaire said, and if his tone was sharper and more defensive, Combeferre did not comment.

( _Grantaire had left his hat at the Musain, and Combeferre had found it when he and Enjolras were the last to leave. Combeferre had picked it up, and it had seemed a simple favour, just to bring it home for him - he didn’t dislike Grantaire, and appreciated his courage to voice a sharper perspective in the light of everyone else’s passion._ _  
_

_He had more courage than Combeferre, but the sandy-haired man doubted Grantaire would believe it if he were to tell him so._

_He had not expected to find Grantaire painting, grasping fervently, feverishly, passionately at paints and spreading their oil across the canvas, and he had not expected Grantaire to talk so dreamily and furiously and emotively when Combeferre has asked what had captured his artist’s heart so_.)

"Then to whence will it go?" Grantaire glared at him, and his eyebrows were too big for his uneven eyes, Combeferre thought, but there were a dozen ugly pieces of Grantaire’s face that fitted together to create a tremendously ugly countenance as a whole.

Combeferre had never made a comment on the fact, for it seemed immaterial in the scheme of things. Every man was equal in death, so Gavroche was fond of saying ( _so knowing, so adult, so mature for a young gamin_ ), and when rifles and cannonfire and bayonets wrenched them all apart, Combeferre doubted any of them would look prettier than each other.

"My rooms." Grantaire said simply, and he was tired, oh, he looked so exhausted all the time, and Combeferre’s heart bled for Grantaire as it bled for every man and woman starving in the streets, for Grantaire held and carried with him a melancholy  Combeferre couldn’t even quantify. He clicked his tongue, tutting, and Grantaire looked ready to take offence, but Combeferre interrupted him.

"I shall buy it." Whatever it was Grantaire had been expecting, those words were not it. He stared at Combeferre with his mouth open like a fish. 

"What?"

"Give me your price."

“ _What_?” 

"The price. For the painting. How much?"

"It is not for sale!" Grantaire spluttered, and his cheeks had gone ruddy with a quick flush of blood, the blush- well. It wasn’t pretty, for nothing was pretty on Grantaire’s physiognomy, but Combeferre liked it all the same. 

"A trade then." He challenged, and Grantaire did not notice when Combeferre stepped closer, for he was somewhat distracted at the student’s ridiculous proposition.

"What have  _you_  to trade?”

"Anything!" Combeferre said boldly, and Grantaire suddenly deflated, and no, no, that wasn’t what Combeferre had wanted at all.

"Stop this." He said, and he gestured desperately to the room around them, but Combeferre knew what he really spoke of.

"Anything within my power." He amended, and his tone was sad enough that Grantaire looked as if he might sob. 

"A gift." The drunkard said finally. "I shall gift it to you."

"Grantaire, no-"

"A  _gift_.” The drunkard insisted. “Have I ever celebrated one of the four birthdays I have known you for? Or the Christmases? No, I have not! So, a gift.” And no, he hadn’t, so Combeferre had conceded.

"I thank you."

Enjolras had entered then, with Bahorel, Courfeyrac and Feuilly coming after him, and so Combeferre and Grantaire had broken apart. It was early next morning that Grantaire brought the painting to Combeferre’s quarters, not as small as Grantaire’s, and cleaner, but neither of them said so.

They did not speak of the painting, and Combeferre hung it on his wall, and that was that.

( _It was after, when Combeferre’s body was found among the dead, that his mother and his sisters had taken to his rooms, each sobbing and clutching at handkerchiefs, but all of them had stopped to see the rendering in its place on the wall._

_The barricade was obvious, a startling prediction of what was to come, but there were flames. Enjolras at the head, Combeferre and Courfeyrac at his sides, and the other amis surrounded them, faces of students that Combeferre’s mother recognized from his introductions or from the piles of dead she had seen in the streets that week._

_Flames licked around the students, around Enjolras and his two seconds most of all, and the inferno carried up to the sky, setting the blue alight as if to show the Heavens were burning too, burning for a revolution that would fail._

_Grantaire had not included himself in the image, and yet in it, he was everywhere. Combeferre could see that when he looked upon it, looked upon the ever-so-slight streaks of green tinge among the flames._

_His mother and his sisters did not see Grantaire, and yet they were arrested by the sight all the same.)_

"What will become of that painting, do you think?" Combeferre asked quietly of Grantaire in the corner, in a moment of silence when it was just them together in the Corinthe, and Grantaire had affixed him with a drunken stare of sudden realization. "When we are all dead?"

"When we all burn, you mean? Perhaps it will fall from its place on the wall and collapse into dust, as if it were never there. Like us." Grantaire suggested, and both of them laughed even though no joke had been made but their own lives. It was hollow laughter, without joy or mirth, but they each found an odd sort of companionship in it, and Combeferre clasped his shoulder before he went outside to pick up a carabine.

Grantaire took to drinking, and when he woke from his stupor, the revolution’s flames were nearly died down, with just two more sparks to extinguish.


End file.
